Chuc
mung nam moi - Happy New Year! (Lunar Year). The Tet Nguyen Dan, or Festival of
the First Day, celebrates the incoming year. It's the most important celebration
in Vietnam. For us, it's an explosive introduction to a new country. Fireworks
crackle in the streets and ward off evil spirits. No public transportation will
run today and so we're stuck in a small village, Hong Son, in the mountainous
spine of Vietnam, near the border with Laos. One hotel exists in this village
and since restaurants have closed for holiday, the hotel staff let's us eat with
their family. They serve banh chung, a square cake of sticky rice and pork, wrapped
in banana leaves and boiled for 10 hours. Banh chung is the traditional dish of
Tet, the christmas goose of the Vietnamese New Year.

By
our experience, one Tet ritual involves dragging a foreigner off the street and
into the home to drink shots of rice liquor.

Every house in this village has an incense
burner on the balcony, a red flag in the yard, and children playing.